The longest, most high resolution, most inconvenient paleoclimate data that hasn’t been published

What’s wrong with this image? Well if you are part of The Team (RealClimate and friends), it goes against everything you’ve been publishing. You want the Medieval Warm Period to disappear, and you want a hockey stick at the end showing “unprcedented” warming. The shape below just doesn’t cut it when that’s what you are researching selling.

On the left is temperature in °C, on the X axis, years, with labels from 0AD to the year 2000.

Images like the above don’t sell. With a clear MWP and no hockey stick, there’s no alarm, and no $$ coming in for “further studies”. In the Wake of the Gergis et al retraction, Steve McIntyre notes that one of the “screened out” datasets just happens to be the one with the best resolution and the greatest duration – the Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set (from Antarctica). He writes:

An annual version for two millennia was provided to Gergis (who screened it out.) delD and O18 are closely related and presumably the unarchived del D series will look somewhat similar.

For those that don’t know what this data represents, here’s a quick primer from Wikipedia.

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Oxygen isotope ratio cycles are cyclical variations in the ratio of the abundance of oxygen with an atomic mass of 18 to the abundance of oxygen with an atomic mass of 16 present in some substances, such as polar ice or calcite in ocean core samples. The ratio is linked to water temperature of ancient oceans, which in turn reflects ancient climates. Cycles in the ratio mirror climate changes in geologic history.

…

Connection between temperature and climate

The 18O/16O ratio provides a record of ancient water temperature. Water 10 to 15 °C (18 to 27 °F) cooler than present represents glaciation. As colder temperatures spread toward the equator, water vapor rich in 18O preferentially rains out at lower latitudes. The remaining water vapor that condenses over higher latitudes is subsequently rich in 16O.[2] Precipitation and therefore glacial ice contain water with a low 18O content. Since large amounts of 16O water are being stored as glacial ice, the 18O content of oceanic water is high. Water up to 5 °C (9 °F) warmer than today represents an interglacial, when the 18O content of oceanic water is lower. A plot of ancient water temperature over time indicates that climate has varied cyclically, with large cycles and harmonics, or smaller cycles, superimposed on the large ones. This technique has been especially valuable for identifying glacial maxima and minima in the Pleistocene.

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McIntyre adds:

Oxygen isotope series are the backbone of deep-time paleoclimate. The canonical 800,000 year comparison of CO2 and temperature uses O18 values from Vostok, Antarctica to estimate temperature. In deep time, O18 values are a real success story: they clearly show changes from the LGM to the Holocene that cohere with glacial moraines.

On its face, Law Dome, which was screened out by Gergis and Karoly, is an extraordinarily important Holocene site as it is, to my knowledge, the highest-accumulation Holocene site yet known, with accumulation almost 10 times greater than the canonical Vostok site. (Accumulation is directly related to resolution: high accumulation enables high resolution.) The graphic below compares glacier thickness for some prominent sites for three periods: 1500-2000, 1000-1500 and 0-1000. its resolution in the past two millennia is nearly double the resolution of the Greenland GRIP and NGRIP sites that have been the topic of intensive study and publication.

Given the high reliance on O18 series in deep time, one would think that paleoclimatologists would be extremely interested in a publication of the Law Dome O18 data and be pressuring Tas van Ommen on this point.

…

But despite the apparent opportunity offered by Law Dome, there has been virtually no technical publication of a high-resolution O18 or delD isotope series.

…

A Climategate email shows that Phil Jones asked about the omission of the Law Dome series from the IPCC illustration in the AR4 First Draft. I asked the same question about the AR4 Second Draft. They realized that the Law Dome graphic had an elevated medieval period and thus, including it in the graphic would – to borrow a phrase from the preparation of AR3 – would “dilute the message” and perhaps provide “fodder to skeptics”.

1) the graph clearly shows that modern warming is in no way unusual. It has been warmer in much of the past 2000 years without any relation to increases in CO2.
2) the climategate emails show the Team knowingly conspired to downplay this information and paint a false picture for the IPCC.
3) the world owes Steve McIntyre a debt that can never be repaid. Rather he is slandered for his efforts by politically correct “scientists” in their pursuit of fame and fortune.

It really doesn’t take too much to figure out why the series hasn’t been published.

It would be scientific suicide to any scientist that did publish the result. They would be vilified and at risk of ruining their career.

There would be a hue and cry against them. No matter how careful and exacting their work, it would be labelled rubbish. Even if they could get it published, dozens of counter arguments would be widely published before the ink was dry.

So, when faced with the reality, the result are tucked away in the closet and the politically correct answer is submitted instead.

If Global Warming is a fact, then surely “global” means just that. The hockey stick should be replicated in Antarctica studies if AGW is happening, the fact that it isn’t in this study confirms what a load of c**p AGW is.
I think in years to come, the hockey stick will rank equally with epicycles as far as science by bigotry goes.
The Mushroom Policy: Kept in the dark and fed on s**t!

“They realized that the Law Dome graphic had an elevated medieval period and thus, including it in the graphic would – to borrow a phrase from the preparation of AR3 – would “dilute the message” and perhaps provide “fodder to skeptics”.”

If the suppression of such data confirms one thing, it’s that these so-called scientists are nothing more than political advocates, with science being just a means to advance their policies. It was always about politics, never science.

Watermelon Warmers are not interested in Facts.
They work with BS (Bureaucratic Science)
When all the Watermelon Warmers admit their Lie
We will raise a Monument into the Sky
A Monument of Solid Carbon
To commemorate their Bogus Bargain.

‘This construction’s important because, for the first time, we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the MWP did exist, and that present warming is caused not by man contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere, but by natural variability primarily.’

‘Climate Audit did it. No matter how you look at it, Steve did it. That’s it.’

Tas van Ommen, who’s done the work but apparently not published much, sees a clear hockey stick in snowfall; “What we found is that the last 30 to 40 years stands out as a complete outlier. It’s not something that’s within the band of natural variability at all….We’ve got the smoking gun that shows this recent period is outside the range of natural variability”.

Sorry, for the non-astronomical minded I should have defined epicycles.
In medieval times the Catholic Church taught that the Earth was the centre of the universe and everything circled around it. When observations became more accurate in the 17th century and this was found not to be the case, religious “scientists” said that to explain the observations, the heavenly bodies moved in circles around the earth, but also in smaller circles at the same time. As observations got even more accurate and it was discovered that the perfect circular orbit did not exist they kept adding more and more epicycles to interpret these observations.
The parallel between early 17th century science and AGW is very close, except for having dissenters burned at the stake, although I think the warmists would like this to happen!!

I suspect that you would get a similar graph for land temps if you a) removed all the CRY and GUSH “corrections”, and b) made proper corrections for urban heat effects and really bad changes in the surrounding environment of many land based thermometers.

This is the only logical data that demonstrates why the Vikings were able to survive so long in Greenland. Today they would not have been able to do so so the climate in those days must have been radically different.

the ideologues are too busy “forging a consensus” – ie finding new ways to keep inconvenient truths away from the public – to do anything resembling science. Real science is falsifiable, and this is one of the many research projects to falsify the anthopogenic climate change consensus. But while real scientists embrace Popper and his doctrine of falsification, pseudo-scientists run away from him.

That is one stunning graph. With resolution like that, and a shape like that, it’s a bit like hearing a CD of something you’ve only previously heard on a badly beaten-up cassette from about 1970 – and discovering it was a completely different piece of music all along.

I do hope there are multiple safe copies of the data around, given what tends to happen to inconvenient data which threatens The Cause. As it is, I shall print out the graph anyhow and keep a copy in my pocket at all times for ease and speed of deployment.

Doubtless this chart will either be ignored, or suitably ‘adjusted’, by the IPCC in its next fantasy report.

The Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set should be the final nail in the CAGW hoax, but unfortunately it won’t be. It will be explained away as not being scientifically significant, a local aberration or whatever.

Perhaps what is most frightening is the fact that if Steve had worked for government or an NGO, this would have been quashed and he would most likely have been dismissed for his heretical discovery, such is the censorship power of the CAGW cult.

Oops, I had not realised that the Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set had already been officially ignored by the IPCC as being inconvenient.

‘Ignored’ is probably not exactly correct, as passing reference is made (without illustrations) in the IPCC’s last report, but in a way that no one will realise it is even there. Classic tactics of hoaxers who can then deny any criminal wrong doing, if they are caught out.

Nick, if you look at the vertical axis, you’ll see that the top reads 20.0 and the bottom reads 23.0.
Does that in any way affect your perception of the MWP, in the light of your revelation that d18O correlates negatively with temperature?

“This data set includes CO2 and CH4 records derived from three ice cores obtained at Law Dome, East Antarctica, from 1987 to 1993. Law Dome is a medium size, approximately circular, (200 km dia., 1390 m high) ice sheet situated at the edge of the main East Antarctic ice sheet. The data in this set include cores drilled between 1987 and 1993 to a depth of 1199.6.”http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0245.html

I went to look for what the Taylor Dome O18 series, to see if it were similar. The Taylor Dome shows synchronization between NH and SH climate over the Holocene and seems a more accurate record compared to Vostok at least.

Surprisingly, nothing has been published for the Holocene .

Something that SM has remarked on,

In their figure, they illustrated Taylor Dome from interior Antarctica: here is the bottom panel of Figure 6-2 showing information from Taylor Dome – curiously they show dD values rather than dO18 (shown for the other sites) , even though dO18 is available for Taylor Dome.

I dislike proxy evidence in the sense that you can have no confidence in the correctness or accuracy of the evidence, and any extrapolations drawn therefrom. At best it may give a shape of trends but even that is uncertain.

I do not know how accurate the Law Dome O18 evidence is and whether it is to be preferred to other proxy evidence. However, the mere fact that it is not included and discussed in the IPCC reports clearly demonstrates that these reports make no attempt to impartially examine the science and issues arising from climate and climate change, but instead it is an advocacy document promoting political aims.

This evidence should be promoted to a wider audience with questions being asked as to why it is not included in the IPCC reports.

pat says:
June 12, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Speaking of something not cutting it. Yesterday the wooly mammoth went extinct because of a meteor . Today we discover it was climate change. Not a meteor. Campfire Global Warming. Or something like that.

We found out they tasted like chicken.

From a link in the sidebar: “The bottom line is that we really don’t know why some of these ancient species became extinct,” adds Ted Goebel, researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M and affiliated with the Center for the Study of First Americans.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102161253.htm

Looks nice, but again not quite “it”.
The MWP is not long enough. My contention is that the LIA that started around 1300-ish was a catastrophic drop in temperatures from a previously very high point. This has a decline about 150 years early. There also aren’t enough deep troughs in the LIA for my liking.
I have never really been able to define when the MWP started, this looks a bit early to me but I’m willing to be convinced.

Even Gavin Schmidt states as much: “As mentioned above, there are a priori reasons to assume d18O records in terrestrial records have a temperature component. In mid-latitudes, the relationship is positive – higher d18O in precipitation in warmer conditions. This is a function of the increase in fractionation as water vapour is continually removed from the air. Most d18O records – in cave stalagmites, lake sediment or ice cores are usually interpreted this way since most of their signal is from the rain water d18O. However, only one terrestrial d18O record is used by Loehle (#9 Spannagel), and this has been given a unique negative correlation to temperature.”http://climateaudit.org/2008/11/30/gavin-schmidt-and-uniquely-oriented-speleothems/

The Team keeps trying to bury this stuff, and Climate Audit keeps digging it up:

Just like the earlier IPCC report which showed a graph of low Arctic sea ice extent in the early 1970s. These climate scientists are seeing what they want to see. Their story is based on biased adjustments and outright fabrications.

Certainly a “WOW!” moment for me when I read this over breakfast. Ferd Berple is correct – we owe Steve McIntyre a huge vote of thanks.

And Anthony too, just as much, less in some ways but more in other ways. And the team here. Not least the astounding, utterly astounding way Anthony has laboured on and on, under pressure but keeping up the pressure, with almost unfailing courtesy and insight, no time for “feeling off” days.

BTW, there are problems with the ice core record – the oxygen isotope record is fine, no probs there, but there are very serious issues as far as I am concerned, with the CO2 therein encapsulated and the supposed records the ice core shows of CO2 levels.

Please don’t forget folks, it was Al Gore’s (and others’) original use of these two ice core records alongside each other, temperature and CO2, that was a big cause of our current alarmism problems. Certainly it is the scientific weak link that allowed money interests in, and still IMHO needs more air time here on the skeptics blogs. The Ice Hockey Stick. Exactly the same kind of issues as with all the other hockey sticks – improper splicing – but in this case, the fact that it’s spliced is not nearly so obvious.

I think in years to come, the hockey stick will rank equally with epicycles as far as science by bigotry goes.

You are doing Ptolemy a great disservice. His theory of epicycles enabled astronomers to make predictions of the movements of the planets that were accurate enough for most purposes and that is why his theory survived for centuries.

Nick Stokes says “Not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.”
Which is why the y axis in the first graph decreases in value – that is reflecting increasing temperatures….

Not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.

You obviously didn’t read the article or you would have read the sentence that says just that. “Water up to 5 °C (9 °F) warmer than today represents an interglacial, when the 18O content of oceanic water is lower”

[b]No, it does not![/b] A sad mistake, started with Willy Dansgaard and there are several studies finding contradictions with that supposition.

For meteorologists it’s easy to explain where the error is. In the textbooks and several studies you will find that the major drivers for 18O fractination, d18O is the temperature at condensation and the raining out or Rayleigh processes.

So what is that cloud temperature? Isn’t that the dewpoint, which is primairely a function of absolute humidity. And of course, most of the time there is a correlation between temperature and humidity, but not always as in the desert.

But the rayleigh process may even be a bigger problem, if the prevailing weather patterns change for some reason, as everything was changing between glacials and interglacial periods, the rain out could also change considerably.

P.S.
Those who are so fond of Andrew Rivkin’s “balanced reporting” should ask him to investigate, why this most important data is being “screened” (disappeared) by ever-so-honorable “scientists.”
Bet you $100 he won’t bother.

The data had to be there if enough effort was made or the correct site chosen for the best resolution. The graph showing temperature from the Cambrian shows the Ordovician ice age when the atmospheric CO2 content was in excess of 6000ppmv with some data showing 8000ppmv. What happened to the GHG theory then?
Good, interesting post.

Looks to me as though an arbitrary axis was inserted around -21.5°C & flipped the graph at that point to show continued warming as opposed to moderate cooling since the MWP! You have to admire their sheer treachery & deceit all for a fast buck & a pension plan!

The Law Dome is in Antartica – southern hemisphere – which has a somewhat different climate to the northern hemisphere – so I would hesitate to use Law Dome alone to project a global picture of the past. Vostok shows something different .
Also, as Nick Stokes says, d18O correlates negatively with T. – so how does the graph show a medieval warm period? Please clarify someone!

AndrewMHarding, you are mixing two issues. There was the empirical issue of circles versus ellipses and the formal issue of the centre of the system. Because all motion is relative, it does not matter from which point of view a system of moving bodies is described. Bruno was burned at the stake because of the formal issue. Perhaps he was the only one. Many people got this treatment because of their Protestant rebellion against the Old Church and State. It is an historical myth that scientists shared their cruel fate. You better should explain that AGW is an empirical issue because it makes wrong predictions (like the hot spot, etc.).

“With a clear MWP
Not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.”

Indeed it does – that’s exactly the point. Colder temperatures cause O18 to precipitate closer to the equator with less making it to higher latitudes. Warmer temperatures allow more O18 to diffuse to higher latitudes. The MWP is clearly shown on the graph from approximately year 650 through 1150. The LIA is not so clear, but still present.

Clean your glasses, read the articles carefully, then support your snark with real science, (oh, but first, open your mind).

In all scientific curiosity, I truly want to hear the honest explanation from someone on the Team or their fan club why they exclude this data. We speculate conspiracy, but is there some scientific justification for exclusion? In Big Pharma you cannot exclude any data. If you collect it, you have to make it available. No excuses.

“not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.”
Nick, take a closer look at the graph. The
Y- coordinates decrease as you move vertically up the graph. Did you borrow Mike Mann’s Tiljander colored glasses before doing your analysis?

pwl asks who Law was. Phillip Law was an Australian scientist who worked in Antarctica for many years between about 1950 and 1965.He added a great deal to early post-war Antarctic science and exploration.

@ andrewmharding “I think in years to come, the hockey stick will rank equally with epicycles as far as science by bigotry goes.”

I would respectfully disagree and suggest that you are being a bit unfair to the idea of epicycles. When the theory of epicycles was proposed it was really the best explanation of what was being observed. Granted, after the data became more clear with longer and more accurate observations, the idea of epicycles became more and more complicated until it was finally replaced by heliocentrism, but it seems that at a minimum we can grant that the people who supported epicycles were honest in their support. CAGW, in contrast, is perhaps more akin to the Piltdown Man story. As we see in CAGW theory a longer and longer trail of unexplained and unethical alteration of data, misrepresentation of the facts, and unscientific refusal to allow for discourse and debate, one can only come to the conclusion that — just as with Pildown Man — we are not witnessing honest error, but rather conscious fraud.

No snark. It’s a question of how d18O varies with T. I simply said that n my understanding of that relation it didn’t seem that way to me. And got a bewildering array of responses.

The graph isn’t in Celsius, it’s in d18O ratio units. And the scale isn’t inverted, as a lot of people said. What I was probably wrong about, as I promptly noted, is that the interpretation of d18O vs temp scaling can vary. In coral etc it’s negative, which would make the logic here wrong. But in ice cores, it’s apparently generally positive.

OK, sorry for raising the question. But it seems I’m not the only one confused.

Am I imagining things, or are Google searches becoming more ‘fair and balanced’? I googled ‘law dome’ (without the quotes) and was shocked to see several links back to climateaudit.org in the top half of the first page.

Or perhaps the Google folks just haven’t adjusted this query to push the usual AGW/CAGW sites into the front of the response queue.

Ignore Antarctica folks, the Medieval Warm Period was a kinda patchy, northern hemisphere affair (except for South America, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and of course the hot house Antarctic Peninsula).

Not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.

—————————————————————————————————

“Oxygen isotope series are the backbone of deep-time paleoclimate. The canonical 800,000 year comparison of CO2 and temperature uses O18 values from Vostok, Antarctica to estimate temperature. In deep time, O18 values are a real success story: they clearly show changes from the LGM to the Holocene that cohere with glacial moraines.”

Alexander Feht says: June 13, 2012 at 5:35 am“Right above the graph, it says in English:”

Yes, but on the graph it says, equally clearly, d18O. And I’m sure that is right. The numbers are in the usual range for d18O. And proxies are not related to absolute °C, only to anomalies. Otherwise you’d have the task of saying exaqctly where the °C, was measured. It certainly wasn’t at Law Dome. There’s no station there.

For once I have to sort of agree with Nick Stokes. The graph, though interesting, does not clearly lay out a picture of earlier temperatures…and it is those that we are interested in. Having a y-axis labelled ‘upside down’ does not help, and using the unfamiliar unit of ‘d180’ does not aid our understanding.

If this graph really shows what some have claimed it does…the ‘Death of the Hockey Stick’ and/or the final proof of the MWP, then it is indeed big news.

But for general consumption (ie. anybody who doesn’t have a Masters in the gaseous absorption of ice cores) it needs to be redrawn with familiar y-axis units (C, K or F) and with a readily comprehensible but scientifically watertight explanation of how it has been derived – and all the data published in an easily accessible form.
.
Unless and until this has been done it is better not to run around like Chicken Little making possibly unsubstantiable claims. The recent experience of our Australian friends has shown that premature ejaculation can be deeply problematical – even in a closed circle of supposed mates. Advice that we should heed.

Happy to help if I can, but others probably have better skills than me.

Looking from the interactions betweens the climate blogs, its looking more and more like believers and lukewarmers such as SM and Lucia by now are beginning to realize had badly they have been had by “climate Scientists” Expect to see a shift in readership (ie believers abandoning the sites en masse) LOL

Right above the graph, it says in English:
“On the left is temperature in °C, on the X axis, years, with labels from 0AD to the year 2000.”
Still not clear? Go join some mega-church.

And on the ACTUAL graph it is labeled d18O ranging from -23.0 up to -20.0 – going more positive.
while on the Pleistocene graph it is labeled on the right side d18O ranging from +3 up to -4 – going more positive.

And I want to know why in the one case positive is warmer and in the other case positive is colder.

But since none of you seem to know the answer I’ll go join a mega church – they are probably a lot smarter than you and certainly do their cause a lot more credit.

And on the ACTUAL graph it is labeled d18O ranging from -23.0 up to -20.0 – going more positive.
while on the Pleistocene graph it is labeled on the right side d18O ranging from +3 up to -4 – going more NEGATIVE.

Hasn’t the Gergis paper been put ‘on hold’ rather than withdrawn outright?

REPLY: It was removed from the American Meteorological Society Journal of Climate. That’s what you call “withdrawn”. The “on-hold” language is just face saving wordcraft on the part of the authors, especially after Gergis berated McIntyre for daring to ask for additional data. – Anthony

sticky post ? BTW I would have thought that this is a VIP story as the Law Domet is probably a real view of world temps. (ie no warming whatsoever). I still do not trust ANY of the data provided by GISS, Hadcrut or the BEST as it is derived from those centers. I do trust NOAA satellite data R Spencer. and it looks like a binomial curve to me (ie no warming again, due to C02 anyway)

Actually that’s my point, although I suppose I didn’t make it very well.
The MWP ( yes there is one Mr Stokes ) tails off about 100-150ish years too early. The sudden drop that we associate with the LIA looks roughly on the money at 1300-ish, but from a much lower base and then recovers again a bit too quickly.

I can say I am always looking for data such as this high resolution Law Dome ice core (I just trolled through the whole paleo ice core database at the NCDC a few days ago looking for new ones) and I can say I have never seen this Law Dome d018 record.

Paul Dennis posted on Climate Audit about the Gomez ice core (not Law Dome) and it only goes back to 1857.

Not so clear to me. As I recall, d18O correlates negatively with temperature.

Nick – you are way too accustomed to looking at data upside down. This is not a Mannanian type graph. So now we can expect you to become a full fledged skeptic, or will you continue with upsidedown denial?

I would love, to actually witness, someone emerge from a deluded state, into the light of reality. GK

If one wants to convert the Law Dome do18 isotope numbers above into Temperature, the formula for Law Dome would be about:

Temp C = 0.80 * do18 – 4.0

This will give you a temperature around -20C which is the average annual temperature at the Law Dome summit. It will also give you temperatures at about -27C during the height of the last ice age (Law Dome on the coast did not decline as much as central Antarctica at -10C in the ice ages).

For other places in Antarctica, the formula will vary some (for central summits the 0.80 changes to about 0.90 and the 4.0 to about 8.0 – for the Antarctic Pennisula, the 0.80 changes to about 0.65).

David L says:
June 13, 2012 at 4:06 am
In all scientific curiosity, I truly want to hear the honest explanation from someone on the Team or their fan club why they exclude this data. We speculate conspiracy, but is there some scientific justification for exclusion?
====================
Bad news sells newspapers. It also brings in grant money. That is the scientific justification.

There is no speculation required. Read CA (see below) for the climategate email. This was no accident. It was a conspiracy to leave the information off the IPCC graphics, but mention it BRIEFLY in the text . Thus, most readers would not see the implications, and there would be a defense against the few that did.

There is a clear conflict of interest going on here. Tax paid scientists are selectively publishing information that says there should be an increase in taxes (more grant money). They are knowingly hiding information that says an increase in taxes is not justified (less grant money).

Let your elected representative know where you stand and encourage you fellow tax payers to do the same. Call and write your local representative and let them know this must stop. Until it does they will lose your support, campaign funding and your vote. Let your politicians know that self-serving scientists directly threaten the politicians’ future.

Notice how this “science”, ensconced in universities, funded by government grants bringing in boodles of “general budget” monies (often up to 80% of grant funding), with “scientists” enabled to attend multiple jet-set-location conferences, employ many grad students and “technical staff’, buy mountains of computer power to develop more hockey-stick models — notice how they are all part of the higher education bubble. It is bursting today. All those students and their parents who have been shelling out the trillions (or quadrillions? — including tax-payer backed loans) for something they thought had value both in terms of education/enlightenment (Enlightenment) and skills for future jobs are finding out that they have been had. This will not end well for the fraudsters. My hope is that the most prominent of the liars spend some time in prison; my other hope is that the most “influential” lose their lucrative pensions. I wish them a retirement of poverty as punishment for being part of a cabal attempting to drive the developed word into poverty.

Now for the positives! It is time for new institutions of integrity. The old have failed, including most of higher education, “mass” (corporate) media, and crony corporatists. Free enterprise such as practiced by Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, and many others who touch base at WUWT is the path to the future. (I am also thinking of the serious on-line courses from scientists and mathematicians of integrity.) Thanks to all for the magnificent efforts.

The atmospheric CO2 reconstructions presented here offer records of atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios from 1006 A.D. to 1978 A.D. The air enclosed in the three ice cores from Law Dome, Antarctica has unparalled age resolution and extends into recent decades, because of the high rate of snow accumulation at the Law Dome drill sites (Etheridge et al. 1996). Etheridge et al. (1996) reported the uncertainty of the ice core CO2 mixing ratios is 1.2 ppm. Preindustrial CO2 mixing ratios were in the range 275-284 ppm, with the lower levels during 1550-1800 A.D., probably as a result of colder global climate (Etheridge et al. 1996). The Law Dome ice core CO2 records show major growth in atmospheric CO2 levels over the industrial period, except during 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly.

‘Short of some Brit announcing that the Thames has frozen over, that is clearly wrong.’

I can assure you,, Lazy, that the Thames is not frozen over…or wasn’t an hour ago when I took the dogs for a run. But forty years of year on year unstoppable global warming has given us the coldest and wettest June within living memory – and probably since records began a very long time ago. So the river is nearing overflow….it’s just a matter of where floods first.

Interesting to note too that the ‘relevant authorities’, fearful of the dreadful consequences of the forty years of unstoppable global warming mentioned above, decided that we are ‘in drought’ about a fortnight before the deluge began. So not only are we cold, wet and flooded, I am not able to use a hosepipe to wash my bike.

Can you please tell me when the ‘warm’ bit of global warming will kick in for UK? I see all these lovely hockey sticks promising us an improved climate…but it never seems to come.

Regarding the possibility of a frozen Thames: A poster here pointed out that the discharges of warmed water from power stations upstream (where it’s used for cooling) ensure that such a freeze won’t happen in the future.

Ah, a minor point. Delta O-18 is a negative fraction, so the Y-axis is not upside down. The ratio between the sample and standard concentrations are subtracted from 1, so larger amounts of O-18 in a sample correlate positively with higher temperatures. If you all glance at that graph again, there are negative signs preceding delta O-18 numbers.

The recent Gergis and Karoly paper not only screened out the Law Dome paper. They also

1) Included two from Vostok ice core proxies covering just 226 years. The same paper, but different methods. One had a C20th warming rate over 5 times the other.
2) Included the Palmyra Atoll coral proxy. This had the fastest C20th warming rate of any proxy – a significantly cooler C12th than the two 1000 year tree-ring proxies.

The ratio is linked to water temperature of ancient oceans, which in turn reflects ancient climates.

and McIntyre agrees. While this may be true for ice cores, the ratio in ocean calcite cores is linked to salinity and has nothing to do with temperature.

I have not found any good reference that publishes both δ18O and deuterium for the same core. However, I have combined 2 separate Vostok data sets – δ18O and deuterium – and discovered that there is NO correlation. It should be obvious to everyone that there is a problem. Specifically, deuterium indicates that there are 4 interglacials recorded in the Vostok ice core – δ18O indicates 8 (eight) or more.

Interesting. Could the Law Dome findings lead to some individuals being brought to law?
From what I remember the the O16 to O18 ratios are determined at the point of evaporation and carries no additional information from transit or deposition. What I also remember is that it takes more energy to evaporate water containing O18 just as it takes more energy to evaporate water containing deuterium (heavy hydrogen).

A bit of a fail on Josh’s cartoon. The Climate Audit bulldozer looks set to cover up the reports being dumped. It ought to be an excavator if he wants the meaning to be clearer….
________________________________
I agree he needs to put in a backhoe instead of the bulldozer: backhoe photo

Again this is a great blog. I just re-read the article and the references. It looks like there is also O16 O18 partitioning during precipitation. I have just updated my old knowledge data base.
Thank you again.

Latimer Alder says:
June 13, 2012 at 9:14 am
Can you please tell me when the ‘warm’ bit of global warming will kick in for UK? I see all these lovely hockey sticks promising us an improved climate…but it never seems to come.
========
Here on the west coast of Canada we are celebrating a brand new month – Junuary. Cold and wet like January, but it happens in June. Warmest decade my ass.

While on the subject of O16 to O 18 ratios I just ran across a paper that shows that there is fractionation taking place due to sublimation, after deposition as snow. (http://iahs.info/redbooks/a114/iahs_114_0122.pdf)
Does this mean that thick deposits of are more representative of the source and transit temperatures? I noticed that Law Dome had thicker layers mentioned.
Are the thinner deposits that are subject to sublimation modified and have a local signal added to them?

@ Barry R: June 13, 6:55 amThe second, longer scale graphic is mislabeled. The time units at the bottom should be in thousands of years, not millions.

No, Barry. The second graph with Cm, O, S, D, C, P….. is a Geologic Time Scale with Cambrian (about 550 million years ago) to present.
Tr, J, K, are the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous which ends at about 65 million years ago.
The uncertainty in the actual number of years is down to about 1%

One of my favorite charts is Manfried Menning, “A Synopsis of Numerical Time Scales: 1916-1986”
See: http://www.episodes.co.in/www/backissues/121/ARTICLES–3.pdf
There is a loose chart about 2 x 3 feet, that compares the time (millions of years ago) for each geologic age and epoch, by about 20 different major authors. It is a beautiful example of uncertainty in science and how a science wrings out the uncertainty over time.

@Nick Stokes
> I see at CA that in fact the Law Dome d18O data
> is available, and has been for some years.

I clicked on the link which lead to this site (via climateaudit):
sites.google.com/site/silenvuea/research-highlights/gomez-nunatak

The data at this link is from Gomez Nunatak ((73°57′S 68°38′W), not Law Dome (66°44′S 112°50′E), which is located on the opposite side of the continent:

But just for grins I looked at the data and plotted it here:

Note that the x-axis is calibrated in meters, so the low xvalues correspond to the top of ice i.e. recent times. The writeup with the data states that it conists of 2314 data points covering 150 year (1855-2007), which makes sense, consistent with late 20th century warming trend.

This can’t be the plot in the article because Anthony claims that it covers 2000 years.

But I’m a bit skeptical about the x-axis labeling. Nobody would use Common Era dates on a numeric scientific plot, because there is a discontinuity at 0 CE. Typically one would use an offset in years from present time etc.

Now the Gomez plot had about 2218 points (with 110 missing values which I filled in with mean values from the time series). So is it possible that Anthony’s x-axis is just a count of data points, not years? In other words this might just be raw data, not calibrated to temperature (which might explain the unusually low recent temps)

Can someone point me to documentation on this particular Law Dome ice core, which will verify that it is calibrated accurately for temperature over a 2000 year span? Other factors (e.g. volcanism) can also create spikes in these 018/O16 plots. So some sort of calibration routine (yikes, a model!) must be applied to smooth and correct for these aberrations and other noise.

The Gomez ice core has nothing to do with the Law Dome ice core. Nick Stokes was mistaken when he brought attention to the post on Climate Audit by Paul Dennis of UEA (who was a co-author on the Gomez ice core paper). The metres of accumulation in Gomez have been translated into “time” which only goes back to 1857.

The issue is – why has this high resolution do18 temperature proxy ice core from Law Dome been suppressed.

There isn’t a lot of opportunity to provide annual (or even decadal resolved) temperature estimates from the ice cores. Law Dome is one of those that has very high accumulation rates and therefore we can get annually resolved CO2 / Methane / Lead measurements from Law Dome (which are published) but the do18 temperature proxy data has been withheld by the scientists who gathered it (other than an email to Steve McIntyre and to many of the ClimateGate scientists).

It obviously didn’t fit with the global warming storyline. Michael Mann would obviously not use it for a hockey stick reconstruction and neither did the IPCC or anyone – because it has been suppressed.

Roy says (June 13, 2012 at 1:59 am):
You are doing Ptolemy a great disservice.
———-
Absolutely. And it cost the taxpayers nothing for 1500 years despite being wrong……”””””

Where did you get the idea that Ptolemy’s epicycle theory is wrong. Of course it is correct. Why don’t YOU take whatever 21st century theory you happen to believe, and then transfer the origin of your co-ordinate reference frame, from the sun to the earth; and then explain how it is different from Ptolemy’s epicycles.
I do believe it was Albert Einstein who told us there is no absolute reference frame.

I actually found a book in my old alma mater library, that had a full description of Ptolemy’s epicycles, with simply stunning graphs. As I recall, it also had a derivation of the elastic properties of the “ether” medium, in order for it to be able to propagate waves at the velocity of light.
Either one is a whole lot easier to understand as well as believe, than string theory is.

I’ve updated my page on the Ice Hockey Stick concerning the ice core record of CO2 which I regard as the biggest scam going, still not widely commented-on, and with Al Gore’s input, the mother of all our AGW alarms. Will do an article if I can, after Graeff.

In checking out the availability of ice core date in relationship to the Gergis debacle, I found this NOAA graph which shows CO2 at around 200ppm for a long time… but plants starve at that level of CO2.

No, Barry. The second graph with Cm, O, S, D, C, P….. is a Geologic Time Scale with Cambrian (about 550 million years ago) to present.
Tr, J, K, are the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous which ends at about 65 million years ago.
The uncertainty in the actual number of years is down to about 1%

Oops. Misread that. A graph going back several hundreds of thousands of years would actually make more sense there, in my opinion, but you are right.

Yes, I too wondered where Tas van Ommen’s “publicly avilable” data are, apart from Steve’s laptop. I looked at the ITASE IceReader which Wikipedia mentions, which appears to be the de facto website for ice core data, and does have a lot of NOAA and NSIDC links (about a quarter of the 200 ice cores mentioned) but doe NOT have URL links for Law Dome.

Lukey B says: June 14, 2012 at 5:36 am
“What do people think the motivation is to persuade the world that global warming is real? Investment in “green-tech”?….

Partly that. But, that is only a tiny part of it. There is a wide array of beneficiaries:

Governments: all levels: more power, more tax, more budgets, and more bureaucracy – they thrive on any form of ‘over- regulation’ and ‘revenue-sourcing’. And for government regulatory arms (eg US EPA) – power, funds, headcount, and ‘a noble cause’!

Researchers and research establishments (publically funded) – obvious enough, and the ‘synergy and feedback loop’ with the above is also obvious.

Green and conservation groups; a wonderful world saving cause and another reason to exist. And a source of funding so long haired sandal wearing layabouts can continue to live their dissolute existence while giving themselves the illusion they are actually doing something.

And no, it does not mean there is a conspiracy afoot. What we have here is a loosely aligned array of groups utilizing (in some cases subconsciously) a common lever to achieve their own ends. It just happens to be something which entirely matches the reason they exist, so asking questions re the validity of the science is not considered or tolerated.

“A recent NASA study may provide some new information on why the human produced greenhouse gasses are not destroying the planet. During the past ten years, NASA has been collecting atmospheric data from their Terra satellite. Their data shows that when the earth heats up, the atmosphere is able to channel energy and gasses out into space much better than they had previously believed.”

and from James Lovelock, leading environmentalist and one of the initial AGW alarmists and author:

“in a recent interview in April of 2012, Lovelock stated, The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.”

If this is the longest and best paleoclimate indicator that’s never been published, why doesn’t Watts or McIntyre publish it?

And by “publish,” I mean submit it with “computer codes” and all supporting data, to a real journal for real review by people that know the science.

Of course, then Watts or McIntyre would be in the position of having to defend it against people who actually know something. I’d pay to see that.

We could start with just a wee bit of common sense, of course. We know what temps have been like for the last 150 or so years… How does this reconstruction compare to the instrument record? If it varies significantly from the instrument record over the last 150 years, then we ask, “What are we missing?” Is there some reason WattsUpWithThat didn’t bother to include the instrumental comparison here?

I contacted Tas van Ommen (via IceReader) and he kindly responded with links and helpful information. Tas was right, these records and data, though somewhat “hidden in plain sight”, are indeed ‘publicly available’ (after you request and receive a free account for downloading).

The data is on an Australian AADC server, for which you will have to request a user account (which was approved instantaneously for me). This NASA/Goddard link will get you to the AADC login, after a few clicks and registration processing:

The meta information with the file explains that the date column is indeed time before present (BP), where present is 2000. The most recent datapoint has a value of 4, thus represents 1996 etc.

Also, contains a note that points older than 700BP are computed via a different data-flow model, presumably because the annual stripes have diffused together.

Anthony’s title for this post had me thinking this dataset would also be high-resolution. Not so.In fact the entire dataset is rather low-resolution, point estimates are 4-years apart.

Having said that, I should point out that the site itself is a ‘high-accumulation’ site, meaning a lot of snow, on the order of a 1 meter per year or so. So the original ice core itself, which the d18o dataset represents, certainly could provide a lot more samples of higher resolution than this highly processed and homogenized d18o data.

I said:
> Also, contains a note that points older than 700BP are computed via a
> different data-flow model, presumably because the annual stripes have
> diffused together.

… so you have to be really careful in comparing present-day conditions (timeBP << 700) with the points representing the MWP, which are greater than 700 years, because two different estimation models are being used, which haven't necessarily been optimally calibrated for such comparisons. Also, as the metadata reveals, the reliability of the estimates degrades with time. So the oldest sample values (with BP=2100 representing 100 BC) have a temporal uncertainty of decades!

As I seem to have the last word on this post, I will merely agree with the most of you that it would be gratifying to learn that those two big bumps do indeed represent a MWP warmer than the current 'unprecedented' warm spells. Gratifying in restoring confidence in government-run science, because "global warming" does indeed seem to be over-hyped by the government(s).

But wanting something shouldn't be interpreted as a proof of what you want. Let's see some solid proof before declaring any kind of 'victory' here.